[ad_1]
Zuzwil
Report against municipal council: SP accuses executive of discrimination – municipal president awaits clarification
An electoral candidacy of SP Zuzwil was rejected by the local council. Reason: age. The party sees age discrimination in this and files a regulatory report.
The Zuzwil community is threatened with hardship: the SP filed a complaint.
The election of tellers in municipalities is usually a formal process that causes little fuss. For once, the opposite is happening in the community of Zuzwil: on December 14, the Social Democratic Party (SP) filed a regulatory complaint against the City Council’s resolutions. The reason: an SP candidacy for the voting and election office was not considered with reference to an age limit decided in 2019. The SP sees this as discrimination against older voters and wants to take action against this restriction.
SP criticizes that it was not informed in advance
It all started out quite banal. In the spring, the SP presented two candidates for election to the municipal voting office. The local council elected two more people in late November, “without hearing or informing the SP in advance,” as the party writes in a press release. Asked by the PS, Mayor Roland Hardegger justified the non-election with the fact that the PS candidate would reach 70 years of age during the mandate from 2021 to 2024. For this, the municipal council relies on a resolution in which it establishes an age limit of 70 years for commission members and experts from 2021 to 2024.
“Let the youth take the helm”
Mayor Roland Hardegger confirms the process. Since the SP report is an ongoing procedure, it cannot provide detailed information yet. But it is true that the local council gave preference to two younger people in the voting office. The age limit now criticized by the SP was decided by the municipal council in 2019. “I think it is correct and important that we let young people take over,” he says. “However, the voting office is not a political office,” says Hardegger.
Advertising offers an opportunity to clarify the age problem.
The SP does not want to accept the age restriction. Of course we have nothing against young people. The elderly should not be excluded for this, ”says Ruth Grünenfelder, SP spokesperson. With its regulatory report, the SP points to the age limit decided by the municipal council in 2019. “We want this to be erased again because it is discriminatory.” For his part, Roland Hardegger sees the announcement as an opportunity to clarify this issue at the cantonal level. “It is not clearly regulated in the legislation,” he says. Now he hopes to clarify the words of St. Gallen.
